(L-R) Ivory Aquino – Photo via Twitter; Alysia Yeoh – Image via DC Comics
Transgender actress Ivory Aquino has made history after being cast in the upcoming HBO Max Batgirl movie.
Aquino will portray the first ever transgender character in a live-action DC Comics film, Alysia Yeoh, the best friend of Batgirl.
Yeoh is a groundbreaking character, having been the first major trans character in a comic book at the time of her debut in 2011, Daily Beast reports.
Leslie Grace, who will star as Barbara Gordon — aka Batgirl — in the film, previously teased Aquino’s casting on her Instagram story earlier this month.
Sharing a photo of the characters crossing a street and holding hands, Grace wrote: “Barbara and Alysia 😍🦇” and tagged Aquino in the post.
HBO Max has yet to set a release date for Batgirl. The film will also star J.K. Simmons as Gotham police commissioner and Barbara’s father James Gordon, Brendan Fraser as sociopathic pyromaniac Firefly, and Michael Keaton — reprising his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman after previously portraying the character in Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns.
Aquino publicly came out as transgender in 2017 during the press tour for ABC docuseries When We Rise, about the history of LGBTQ rights advocacy between the 1970s and 2010s.
Aquino told People that she had considered quitting acting prior to When We Rise, as she “didn’t feel at the time that there were any roles” for transgender actors.
Speaking to NBC News, the Filipina-American actress said, “As soon as I was born, I was always a girl; I was just assigned differently at birth.”
“At some point in high school that desire to express that need in me was so strong that one summer I ended up plucking my eyebrows and colored my hair, and I walked into school and there was a collective gasp in the classroom in the change of appearance,” Aquino said.
She added that being transgender was “nothing to be ashamed of, in fact it’s something to be happy about.”
“I think trans kids are so great amid all of that society tells them,” Aquino said. “They are courageous enough to speak their truth.”
Dutch authorities say Veronica Clifford-Carlos failed to prove she faces a "legitimate risk of persecution" or threat of physical harm in the United States.
A Dutch court has upheld a ruling rejecting a U.S. transgender woman's bid for asylum, finding she does not face a substantial enough threat of persecution in her home country.
Veronica Clifford-Carlos, a 28-year-old visual artist from California, said she once believed she’d build a life in the United States, but felt compelled to flee after receiving death threats over her gender identity.
Clifford-Carlos left the United States -- leaving behind friends and her dog -- and flew to the Netherlands with her father. Upon arrival, she applied for asylum, telling authorities about the abuse she endured in the United States, particularly after President Donald Trump’s re-election last fall.
Tyler Getchell of Jacksonville, Florida, has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting and partially paralyzing his neighbor, Kyle McFarlane, during an argument over what Getchell believed was trespassing.
McFarlane told police he was gathering discarded furniture for a bonfire on November 22 when Getchell and his girlfriend came outside and yelled at him to get off their property, First Coast News reported.
According to the police report, video footage shows McFarlane standing on a property easement -- not on his neighbors' land -- just before the shooting.
Ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday, November 20, Advocates for Trans Equality, a national organization, released a report honoring the 58 known transgender people who have died in the United States over the past year.
First held in 1999, Transgender Day of Remembrance was initially intended to mourn those transgender people lost to violence. The first organizers memorialized Rita Hester, killed in November 1998 in Boston, and Chanelle Pickett, murdered in November 1995 in Watertown, Mass.
Since that first memorial service, cities and regions throughout the world have adopted November 20 as a day to commemorate transgender and nonbinary individuals who have died -- whether due to murder, suicide, or natural causes.
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